


Passing of a Winter Love

by sophiahelix



Category: Beauty and the Beast (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Revisionist Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-10
Updated: 2002-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bittersweet and strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing of a Winter Love

Her husband slept. The thin linen sheets had twisted close around his narrow waist, his pale gold hair fanned on the plush feather pillow, and she watched his bare, smooth chest rise and fall with his peaceful breaths. His white shirt had been hung with care on the back of a brocaded chair, newly recovered and embroidered with bright blue, though his fine breeches lay crumpled on the thick red rug below the enormous, richly canopied bed.

She thought about rising to hang them up too, but decided to leave it to one of the servants. The servants who were people now, with faces she didn't recognize and voices she did, taking up so much space and filling the castle with their chatter and bright smiles.

And the castle, oh, the castle, so light and airy, devoid of its ominous gloom and dusty whispers. It was spring and the windows were left open and no one lit fires in the great hearth anymore. It was too warm to stay indoors and read in the library, they told her, and so she was sent to the vast gardens, the ones she had never seen before, hidden as they had been under their muffling blanket of snow.

She missed her Beast.

The story had ended the right way, she knew, with the deserving prince restored to his crown and the spell broken for the faithful servants. She couldn't deny them their happiness, their freedom, their rights. But where was her place in this tale? She was no princess. She had braved no trials for him, fought no monsters, destroyed no evil sorcerer. She was not beautiful and wise and good. She had only fallen in love, and it had taken death even to make her see the truth of it. She was not the heroine, and the prince was not her reward.

The man in the bed was her husband, but not her lover. He was called Denys. His voice was soft and high, his skin hairless and scentless, and his hands were scarcely bigger than hers. He ate his food daintily, without scratching the old silver or knocking over glasses. He fit the clothes hanging in the mahogany wardrobe in this room, their bridal suite and his parents' bedchamber, and every morning he rode with the men of his court to hunt deer in the green wood.

She wondered if he remembered hunting in those woods as a Beast, padding through the snow, leaping to slash and devour the raw meat in the still cold air. She remembers because he told her once, when she asked if they couldn't have venison for a change instead of endless mutton. He'd snarled and stood up so fast that the long, heavy table had flipped over, sending dishes and candles and food crashing to the floor around her feet, and the old, first fear had chilled her again. But his temper had been waning then, and he'd learned how to calm himself a little.

"I don't ... eat ... the creatures of the forest," he had growled. "Not anymore." And with a swirl of his wine-colored cloak he had turned away to leap with one graceful, terrifying bound to the upper story of the gallery, and vanish in the depths of his chambers.

That night the wardrobe had whispered to her about the old days, when he would return in the night with blood dripping from his muzzle and fire in his blue eyes. How he'd not muttered an intelligible word for years until the housekeeper had insisted he speak his commands, rather than pointing at what he wanted. How the birds had left the grounds of the castle, the rabbits scurrying away into the underbrush and the foxes building new burrows elsewhere, all life fearing the cruel claws and snarls, the crushing jaw of the new master of the forest.

He'd never been like that when she knew him as a Beast, but she'd sensed it in him. The way he'd struck out against the wolves, the hot, snorting breaths he would take when he was angry with her, the click of his claws on the marble floors as he paced at night, all the subtle signs that even the little domestication he had allowed chafed at him. He had loved her, she knew now, but it had been a fierce, possessive love before he had learned gentleness.

And what had sparked that first love, she wondered now. Was it merely the love of a tyrant, of someone who could not flee from him as his family had? Was it knowing the purpose she could serve? Or was it what she wished it to be, her own kindness to him arousing a gentle love in him?

For his love now was weak, and pale, and thin. First he had loved her with the gratitude of a freed captive, and then with the worship of a small child, just learning his way in the world again. He had clung to her in those first days, even through his joy, as the strangeness of his old life returning dizzied him. But he was the master of his castle once again now, and his courtiers looked up to him as their king. The maitre d' had done his job well, training him in the ways of civility. He strode proud and handsome through his halls now, without need for her.

And his love? Without gratitude, without worship, she feared that she was exactly what she felt -- a princess in name only, an ornament for his arm, and a poor one at that, and a companion for his bed at night. The love that had overwhelmed her on that night three months earlier, the mindless, wordless sorrow upon his death, all had faded as the snow melted and spring came upon them. All she had left of their winter together was in his eyes, those familiar eyes that had once loved her, and as time passed she lost even that.

He felt no loss, she knew, no pain at the passing of what they had shared. He was a king, his people loved him, and he walked in human form. He had not lost appreciation for kindness in life, and treated people gently. And perhaps after all he did not see what had changed. The spell had worked a great, deep magic on him and this castle, touching even her. Only after the hasty, rejoicing wedding had she been able to throw off the confusion of the magic, and remember.

Her Beast. So frightening at first, and so tender at the last. His huge hands that were really closer to paws, with the unsheathed, deadly claws he was careful to keep away from her skin. The thick, coarse pelt, smelling of smoke and evergreens and something else, deep and musky, that clouded her head and penetrated with the sense of animal other. The sense of barely restrained power, his voice kept to a husky whisper and his strides painfully slowed to match hers. And yes, the kindnesses and the spark of humanity that had allowed her to love him.

But what she remembered and missed most was that *presence*, the throaty roars and swift movements that had always kept her on the edge, quivering just a little inside despite her shows of bravery. He had filled a room and more, stretching to dominate every inch of the castle, his spirit in the dark, dusty rooms and haunted passages. He was more master then than he could possibly be as a man.

This man in the bed with her, this husband, was a stranger now and always would be. He was consumed with the life of a king, with parley and decree and concern for his people. He remembered her at meals, when he would smile at her across the long table, and at night, when he undressed quickly, still smiling, and took her by candlelight.

The husband and wife part was what hurt her the most. So close, his body pressed to hers, he was truly strange, nothing but that soft pale skin and thin chest and golden, wispy hair curtaining their faces. And he kept his eyes closed. She could feel a dim pleasure from the movement and the closeness, and from the way he would kiss her forehead with warm lips from time to time, but nothing like the ecstasy he took from it. He was gentle up to a point, and then with fierce, panting thrusts he would push into her, finally throwing his head back with a roar that burned her heart, this pale shadow of the man who had been her Beast.

She watched him sleep now, nude and exhausted, a faint smile at the corners of his lips, and did not hate him. She did not know him. She could not have said what she had wanted from her Beast. She had never imagined an ending to their story, only to live out their days in the heart of the dark forest, bound by kindness and affection. When she had known she loved him it had been said only with the fullness of her brimming heart, not for his salvation or this strange man or anything else.

She watched her husband sleep, smooth and helpless on the soft spring night, and dreamed of winter fires and a castle buried in the woods, in the snow, in the night.


End file.
